Find faith on the road without offending

Even if you don't share the faith, being respectful and curious goes a long way

Posted: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 6:22 pm
By Maureen Jenkins Special to CNN

(CNN) -- World-class museums and historic monuments get top priority from many travelers. But for some of us, there's something equally fascinating -- and sometimes much more so -- about visiting houses of worship, even when they represent beliefs that aren't our own.

"But I'm not into organized religion," you might say. You don't have to be religious to appreciate a visit to a place others consider sacred. Even if you're not specifically seeking the religious aspect of worship, there's something special about thoughtfully witnessing and observing someone else's faith in action. So why not get a spiritual boost by checking out houses of worship when you're on the road?

"A lot of the richness in life comes from getting outside your own skin and experiencing the world beyond what you know and understand. If you open yourself up, you can have such experiences," says Stuart M. Matlins, co-editor with Arthur J. Magida of "How to Be a Perfect Stranger: The Essential Religious Etiquette Handbook." The book shares easy-to-understand background on faith traditions ranging from Baptist to Buddhist, Jewish to Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists to Sikhs.

"Typically, the way you are received depends on the way you behave," says Matlins, who also is the founder of Jewish Lights Publishing and SkyLight Paths Publishing. He and wife, Antoinette, co-founded a Reform synagogue in Woodstock, Vermont, where Matlins served as lay spiritual leader for 19 years.

4. i love great architecture and goth even neogoth is pretty great

there are fewer and fewer 'places with mood' in our sterilized stripmall of a world. i like them all. still i prefer other moods like an old cobblestoned alley on a hill by a river lined by redbrick and stone and steel, leaning and crazy and empty windowed, the smell of dead fish in the chill spring morning air. mmmmm.